Worlds Away - Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight: The Damiar Princess of Albarasque

It was the sound of voices, speaking in soft and hushed tones that awoke Ami. It took her a moment to register the soft murmurs as voices, both female, and it took her even longer to sort through the myriad of words and sounds to realize that they were not speaking English. As she came more fully awake, and her brain began to process at higher rates, the language, though not English, became more familiar to her. It was a hybrid mixture of several languages, but somehow her mind began to latch onto the words — first nouns, then verbs, and then her mind began to fill in all the blanks in between — enough for her to interpret what was being said.

". . . is not the sort of thing that the . . ." Ami's mind couldn't translate the term, though it tried to, and then she stored it away for later reference. " . . . wants to happen at this time. This is completely unacceptable."

"I'm sorry," the second voice was softer, a bit timid, "Nynie you must believe me, I did not realize that the princess would —"

"You must learn to anticipate what she will do. Amideira is quite resourceful. I can not keep up with her. You did well at the sister-house, I had hoped —"

"She is different here, Nynie. She is . . . reckless and unrestrained. She obeyed the rules at the sister-house, but here within the Sun Palace . . . I am not making excuses for myself. I erred, certainly, but I am not yet accustomed to . . . to the free reign she is given here. This would be unacceptable at the sister-house."

The other voice, somewhat older if Ami judged correctly, snorted loudly. "She is spoiled. You may as well say it. It is no secret, Sephrine. Amideira is a spoiled child and she always has been. It is simply been by the hand of the gods and fate that I have managed to reign her in as I have."

French and Spanish. As her mind worked furiously to translate, Ami recognized the languages being spoken as a seamless mixture of French and Spanish, leaning heavily towards French. She was grateful for her time growing up around her grandparent's home in West Africa. In her early years French had been almost a second language to her, and although these days she seldom spoke it, as she lay listening it began to come back to her.

Of course, that didn't answer the question of why there were voices speaking in French in the background.

The only way she would get that question answered was going to be to open her eyes, and start asking questions.

Opening her eyes came first, and she groaned and squinted as she did so. The room was brightly lit and the beams of afternoon sunlight boring into her eyes made her head hurt. The second thing she noticed, after dealing with the bright light, was the brocade canopy that covered her bed, obscuring her sight of the ceiling. From the canopy hung down lace and brocade draperies that swaddled the bed and covered it on all sides.

This was not her bed. Not that she hadn't had her doubts when she heard the women speaking, but she didn't like the confirmation of her doubts. This was not her bed, and the simple chemise that covered her was not a part of her normal wardrobe.

Something very strange was going on here.

Well, duh, Ami could hear Megabyte's words in her mind.

At the thought of her friend, Ami sat up quickly, ignoring the stab of pain that shot through her skull. She reached out with her mind, searching for her fellow Tomorrow People — and finding nothing. She couldn't sense them at all. She could sense the two women in the room, she could sense many minds all around this place, but she could not sense her fellow Tomorrow People.

Oh no. This was not happening.

The only thing that saved Ami from a full-fledged panic was the draperies of the bed being drawn back to reveal the faces of two women. Presumably the two women she had been listening to speak.

One was an older woman, perhaps in her mid-forties, her hair hidden beneath a long, colorful scarf of some sort. She had what Ami thought of as 'all-seeing' eyes because the depths of them told you that this was not the sort of woman who let anything slip past her awareness. Her skin was dark, what Ami had once heard her grandmother call 'velvet dark', the color of strong, black coffee. The woman reminded Ami of a matron, and all of her instincts told her this was not a woman she wanted to anger.

The other woman was, as Ami had surmised, younger. She was perhaps Ami's age, maybe only a few years older, and she had that perfect, model like beauty that Ami had always envied in other girls. Her cinnamon brown skin was absolutely flawless and she peered down at Ami through green-gray eyes. Her hair too was hidden beneath a scarf, although hers was not as colorful as the older woman's, but rather a simple blue and silver that matched the blue and silver dress she wore.

"Well, look who decided to rejoin the land of the living," the older woman quipped. Her voice was sharp, but there was a look of infinite warmth and affection in her eyes. "Perhaps that will teach you to meddle with the elements that you aren't ready for yet."

Ami opened her jaw, then snapped it shut. She really couldn't respond to the woman's quip because she had no idea what the woman was talking about. She also wasn't certain that her ability to string sentences together in French would be as easy as her ability to understand them.

The older woman quirked a smile. "No excuses? Are you certain she did not hit her head, Sephrine? I've not known Ami to be so soft spoken."

It took Ami a minute to realize that the younger woman was being addressed as Sephrine. It took her another moment to register the fact that the older woman had called her Ami.

What in the bloody hell was going on?

"I checked twice, Nynie," Sephrine's voice was as soft and sweet as her looks. "She is — physically uninjured."

"Yes, well, mental remains to be seen," Nynie snorted. Ami could tell this woman had honed snorting to an art. "How do you feel, child?"

For the first time, Ami actually fully understood Jade's aversion to being called 'kid' or any similar derivative. Being labeled 'child' made her bristle a bit. Even though she said nothing because she didn't want to anger or annoy these people — who might be her only connection to home — she could tell by the woman Nynie's snort, this one of a different sort than before — that her bristling shone through.

"Don't you start with me. I've raised you, and I'll call you 'child' all I want. You may be betrothed, but you aren't married yet. And even when you are, I'll still call you 'child.'

"Now, tell me, how do you feel?"

Betrothed?

This was not happening. This could not be happening.

"My head hurts," Ami answered, hoping and praying that she had gotten the words right.

"That's to be expected when you're messing with the elements the way you were. You're lucky you didn't burn yourself out." Nynie patted her hand, but her eyes were steely. "Betrothed or no, you're not too old for me to take a switch to. Don't ever forget that."

"Sephrine, bring her some moleswort tea. It should ease her head. And, in the meantime, Your Highness, you will remain in bed and rest. I'll not have you miss supper with your parents tomorrow.

"No books, no lute, and no spell weaving."

Ami could only stare in dumbfounded silence as Nynie swept out of the room, closing the door loudly behind her.

Highness? Betrothed? Spell-weaving?

Ami didn't think that whatever moleswort tea was, that it was going to do anything to soothe the pounding ache in her head.

****

Ami was wrong. The moleswort tea did more than soothe — it managed to put her right back into a positively comfortable slumber. But not before she had tried — and for the most part failed — to get any useful information out of the younger woman, Sephrine. It wasn't that Sephrine wasn't knowledgeable, Ami was positive that the woman was; it was simply difficult to get information when the person you were questioning wasn't aware that anything unusual was going on.

Her instincts told her that it was probably not the wisest idea to mention to these people that she was Ami Jackson and *not* their princess. Of course, it did seem that she *was* their princess. She looked like their princess, as could be told from their reactions to her, and they found nothing unusual in her mannerisms or speech but . . .

Bloody hell, it simply didn't make sense. It was all tied into that peculiar vortex, but without the others here, she couldn't try to find out any information about the vortex either. It was at the moment that Ami began to think about the others and feel her eyes bubbling up with tears, that the tea began to work its magic. Rather than begin to bawl her eyes out at her predicament — and certainly upset Sephrine — she had fallen into a deep sleep.

It must have been a deep, much needed sleep because Ami felt ten times better upon waking. The sun had set and her room was empty, so after a last futile effort to sense and find her friends, Ami gave up. She had to hope that eventually they would miss her and try to bring her back — if they could find her at all.

Banishing the last part of that much unwanted thought, Ami decided to venture out of bed. If she had been sucked into some strange world where she wasn't who she thought she was, then she needed to find out who she was supposed to be in this world. She could not accomplish that by spending the rest of the night and all day tomorrow in bed.

Her feet encountered a heavy braided rug as she swung her legs out of the bed. A quick glance around revealed a bit more about this world than she had been able to glimpse earlier. There was no electricity; a few lit candles provided what light she needed and the room was obviously heated by a central fireplace. At the moment, though, the fireplace was unlit, and while the room was cool it was not uncomfortably cold.

The first thing Ami did was take a good look at herself in the mirror. She didn't know whether to be relieved or concerned that she looked exactly as she had when she saw that vortex on the beach. Aside from the substitution of a simple chemise for her jeans and shirt, and the white scarf that both hid and held her hair back away from her face. And the single piece of jewelry she wore hung closely near the base of her throat — a silver crescent moon pendant etched with a lion and a rose and on the back, glyphs that reminded her of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The association hit home immediately and Ami gripped the pendant in her hand, holding it close to the mirror to inspect it carefully. It couldn't be related, could it? That vortex couldn't have been Sam Rees reaching through time? Anything was possible, and this was one possibility that Ami could not discount.

She was a heartbeat away from tearing the thing from her throat when she heard a voice behind her.

"I still can't get over how absolutely exquisite it is."

Ami's eyes met Sephrine's in the mirror, even as she jumped and yelped, not having heard the woman enter.

"What?" That was the only response that Ami could choke out while her heart pounded in her throat. Too late she realized that she had choked it out in English.

Sephrine did not notice. Or rather she did notice, but did not treat it as unusual. With a nod the woman — perhaps a lady-in-waiting — Ami still didn't want to think too hard about that — switched to English as well. She spoke slowly, with an accented voice, but not with too thick of an accent. "The Temple symbol. And his House markings as well. It surprises me that it is so perfect and so beautiful. Remember, at the sister-house, we spoke of how we did not think those northern barbarians were capable of such fine work.

"Yet, there it is. A gift from your groom. A perfect fit. Like he knows you already."

Ami stared at the reflection of the pendant. "A gift. From my . . . groom?" Ami nearly choked on the last word. This place was unusual enough, but she was being given too much information to process at once. There was the title of Highness and the ladies in waiting, the mention of casting spells and the lingering betrothal.

It made her head spin again.

Sephrine smiled, and for the first time, Ami noticed that the woman carried a covered tray. Placing it on the table, Sephrine continued to speak, "I can not blame you if you are still unhappy about it. I can't imagine anything worse than being married to one of those — savages."

"Sephrine—" Ami opened her mouth to ask a question, only to be cut off as the woman turned and faced her, wringing her hands.

"I know it is not proper to say, Your Highness, but I have tried prayer and meditation and . . . I envy you. I can not seem to find your center of calm and acceptance in this matter of state. I know that it is your duty to marry the High Prince of Stiborn. I know that it is my duty and my obligation, which I carry out because of my love you like a sister, to learn to live in that land among them, but it still unsettles me."

Ami tried to ignore the honorific and all the implications that came with it. "It unsettles me as well, Sephrine." Well, that wasn't a lie. The thought of marrying a strange man in a strange country *did* unsettle her. It was even more unsettling when one of her maids clearly thought the people of that country were barbarians, and was more than a little unsettled by going there.

"Yes, but the seer has at least assured you that he is a good man, whatever the reputation of his people. But living among them . . . their customs are so different from ours. I can not imagine walking around with my face unveiled in public. And their women . . . do it constantly."

Ami felt her eyebrows rise clear to her hairline at the mention of wearing a veil in public. So, not only had she been unceremoniously dumped in a world that she knew nothing about, set to marry a — prince! — that she knew nothing about, she was also dumped into a part of the world that could possibly be some sort of heavily patriarchal society.

Which would certainly explain being shipped off to marry a "barbarian" if Sephrine's words were to be trusted.

Lovely.

Just lovely.

Going home anytime now would be nice.

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